Artificial intelligence (AI) has elicited a range of reactions including one from Microsoft’s chief economist, Michael Schwarz.
Schwarz said during a World Economic Forum panel in Geneva on “I am confident AI will be used by bad actors, and yes it will cause real damage,” he continued, “It can do a lot damage in the hands of spammers with elections and so on.”
He went on to say that AI will need to be regulated and that lawmakers should be cautious and wait until technology causes “real harm”.
In recent months, Microsoft made a multi-year, multibillion-dollar bet on ChatGPT developer OpenAI.
Schwarz said, “Once we see real harm, we have to ask ourselves the simple question: ‘Can we regulate that in a way where the good things that will be prevented by this regulation are less important?’ The principles should be, the benefits from the regulation to our society should be greater than the cost to our society.”
US vice President Kamala Harris will meet the Microsoft, Google and OpenAI CEOs to discuss ways to reduce the risk of harm from AI technologies on Thursday.
Schwarz shared that Microsoft is working towards erecting guardrails to help limit the potential danger from AI tools.
In March, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates wrote, “The age of AI has begun.”
